GRADE 3, UNIT 1

Crafting True Stories

Lucy Calkins and Marjorie Martinelli

n the first sectionbendof this unit, in addition to helping children get accustomed to the routines and expectations of the writing workshop, you will show them examples of third-grade writing notebooks. Then, as children generate personal narrative writing, youll coach them in setting goals for themselves. For some children this will mean increasing their volume and stamina; for others it will mean writing with more attention to conventions or craft. This first bend provides a vision for the kind of writing third graders can do and sets clear expectations in a celebratory, can-do way. Bend II introduces children to keeping a writing notebook. Children will learn to reread their notebooks, to select a seed idea, and then to develop that seed idea by storytelling different ways the story might go (sound, start and end, etc.). Then you will teach them that writers draft by writing fast and furiously, reliving each moment as they go. Next, children will spend time on revision, studying the work of mentor author Karen Hesse; theyll try her techniques in their own drafts. Youll conclude this bend by introducing paragraphing and discussing how to develop paragraphs by adding step-by-step actions, dialogue, thoughts, and feelings. The third bend emphasizes independence and initiative. Youll remind children that writers finish one piece and begin the next right away, applying all theyve learned and moving to higher levels of expertise and independence. Much of what you teach during this time will depend on what you observe when you compare your students writing with the narrative writing checklists. In addition to this revision work, youll teach students the conventions of punctuating dialogue. During the final bend, after students have selected the draft they will publish, you will rally them to tackle a whole new fast draft on that topic. Theyll need to rehearse just as they did for the first draft, envisioning the story bit by bit. Then youll teach children, once again, to look to professional authors to learn ways writers deliberately craft the endings of their stories. Finally, youll show students how to use an editing checklist. As a final celebration, you will create a bulletin board that has a space for each childs writing and then invite classroom visitors to read and admire the work put forth by these blossoming third-grade writers.

Welcome to Unit 1 BEND I

F

Writing Personal Narratives with Independence

1. Starting the Writing Workshop: Visualizing Possibilities

In this session, youll invite students to become writers and teach them that writers make New Years resolutions; they think about the kind of writing they want to make and set goals for themselves to write in the ways they imagine.

2. Finding Ideas for Personal Narratives

In this session, youll teach students that writers generate personal narrative entries by writing focused stories of times spent with people important to them.

3. Drawing on a Repertoire of Strategies: Writing with Independence

In this session, youll teach students that writers sometimes think of a place, list small moments that happened in that place, and then write about one of those moments.

4. Writers Use a Storytellers Voice. They Tell Stories, Not Summaries

In this session, youll teach students that one way writers draw readers in is telling their stories in scenes rather than summaries.

5. Taking Stock: Pausing to Ask, How Am I Doing?

In this session, youll teach students that writers sometimes pause to consider whats going well in their writing and what they might try next to take their writing up a level.

6. Editing as We Go: Making Sure Others Can Read Our Writing

In this session, youll teach students that writers dont wait to edit; they take a minute as they write to make sure their writing is as clear as possible for their readers.

26

Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing Overview and Contents

BEND II

Becoming a Storyteller on the Page

15. Revision: Balancing Kinds of Details

In this session, you could teach students that writers think carefully about the kinds of details they add to their writing, balancing dialogue with actions, thoughts, and details about the setting.

7. Rehearsing: Storytelling and Leads

In this session, youll invite students to rehearse for writing by storytelling, teaching them that writers story-tell their stories and leads many times before writing.

16. Commas and Quotation Marks: Punctuating Dialogue

In this session, youll draw on a mentor text to teach students how writers correctly punctuate dialogue.

8. Writing Discovery Drafts

In this session, youll show students that writers draft by writing fast and furiously, working to capture the mental movie on the page.

BEND IV

Fixing Up and Fancying Up Our Best Work: Revision and Editing

9. Revising by Studying What Other Authors Have Done

In this session, youll teach students that one way writers revise is by studying other authors craft and naming what the author does with precise language so they can try it in their own writing.

17. Writers Revise in Big, Important Ways

In this session, youll teach students how revision can bring writing to a new level so that it rings with clarity and purpose.

10. Storytellers Develop the Heart of a Story

In this session, youll teach students that writers revise by asking, Whats the most important part of this story? and developing that section.

18. Revising Endings: Learning from Published Writing

In this session, youll teach students that writers deliberately craft the endings of their stories, and youll show students how to learn techniques for improving their own work by studying published writing.

11. Paragraphing to Support Sequencing, Dialogue, and Elaboration

In this session, youll show students how writers can revise their stories by grouping related sentences into paragraphs and then elaborating on those paragraphs.

GRADE 3

19. Using Editing Checklists

In this session, youll remind students that writers edit to make their writing exactly how they intend it to be for readers, using checklists to help them.

BEND III

Writing with New Independence on a Second Piece

20. Publishing: A Writing Community Celebrates

In this session, youll celebrate being a community of flourishing writers and share students writing with the public.

12. Becoming Ones Own Captain: Starting a Second Piece, Working with New Independence
In this session, youll emphasize that writers draw on all they have learned to become their own job captains.

13. Revision Happens throughout the Writing Process

In this session, you could teach students that writers revise as they write, stopping at times to ask themselves, Does this show all I know? and if not, they revise their writing right then.

14. Drafting: Writing from Inside a Memory

In this session, youll teach students that writers replay life events in ways that let readers feel the experience.

For additional information and sample sessions, visit www.UnitsofStudy.com

27

GRADE 3, UNIT 2

The Art of Information Writing

Lucy Calkins and M. Colleen Cruz

efore the first day of this unit students need to have chosen the general topic theyll be teaching others about through their writinga topic on which they already have expertise. As they get started writing in this first bend, you will teach them ways to write with authority by inviting them to teach their topic to others and take what they learn from teaching it back to their writing. You will then spend a few lessons teaching students to try out various writing structures before drafting. Bend II emphasizes both drafting and revising, braiding them together as many professional writers of information books do. Students will learn increasingly complex revision strategies, now involving choosing grammatical structures and using research to feed elaboration. They will continue to use ways to improve their writing learned in the primary grades. In Bend III you will help your students prepare for publication, emphasizing the importance of being aware of ones audience. You will also ask students to keep in mind the sorts of things a nonfiction author attends to while preparing for readers: using text features, checking facts, and attending to conventions. These, not incidentally, are skills that third graders need to practice again and again throughout their year and across the disciplines. During the final bend you will push toward independence. Students will learn ways to write informatively, in a variety of genres, about a topic theyve been studying in social studies, thus discovering how transferable writing skills can and should be once they are learned. At the end of the unit, students have an opportunity to teach their writing skills to younger students as a celebration of what theyve learned and as a way to bring full circle the theme of teaching with which this unit opened. Throughout the entire unit, you will see a renewed commitment to grammar, vocabulary, and conventions, all carefully aligned with the Common Core State Standards.

Welcome to Unit 2 BEND I

F

Organizing Information

1. Teaching Others as a Way to Prime the Pump

In this session, youll help children think of information writers as teachers. Youll teach them that information writers organize information as they write, like organizing for teaching a course.

2. The Power of Organizing and Reorganizing

In this session, youll teach children that writers often brainstorm several different ways to organize their information writing. Youll suggest different ways writers structure subtopics and suggest that doing this is an important part of planning.

3. New Structures Lead to New Thinking

In this session, youll teach students that by considering different organizational structures, writers can allow themselves to think about a topic in new ways. You will guide them through a process of trying to structure their writing in various ways instead of settling immediately on one way.

4. Laying the Bricks of Information

In this session, you could teach children that writers of information books take all the information they have and layer the pieces of information, one on top of the other, to teach their reader as much as they can about their topic.

5. Organization Matters in Texts Large and Small

In this session, youll teach students that the organizational skills writers use for their tables of contents can help them plan their chapters as well.

28

Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing Units of Study Contents for Grade 3

Bend II

Reaching to Write Well

14. Using Text Features Makes It Easier for Readers to Learn

In this session, youll teach children the ways text features can enhance their informational writing. Youll guide children to choose the most appropriate features for their books.

6. Studying Mentor Texts in a Search for Elaboration Strategies

In this session, youll teach students various strategies to develop their informational books. Youll suggest using mentor texts as a way to learn more about elaboration and have them apply these ideas to their own writing

15. Fact-Checking through Rapid Research

In this session, you could teach children that writers do research to make sure that all the facts in their writing are correct. If their facts are not correct, writers go back and revise them.

7. Making Connections Within and Across Chapters

In this session, youll teach children how to connect the information in their chapters using different transitional strategies and phrases. Youll suggest they look to a mentor text for ideas about how best to transition in their own informational books.

16. Punctuating with Paragraphs

In this session, youll teach children that when information writers are editing, they keep a close eye on the way they use paragraphs.

8. Balancing Facts and Ideas from the Start

In this session, youll teach children the art of balancing interesting facts with engaging style. Youll highlight revision strategies that encompass both structure and word choice that will enhance their voice in their drafts.

BEND IV

Transferring Learning from Long Projects to Short Ones

17. Plan Content-Area Writing, Drawing on Knowledge from Across the Unit
In this session, youll teach children how to transfer the skills theyve learned in this unit to plan and draft for a content-specific information text.

9. Researching Facts and Ensuring Text Accuracy

In this session, youll teach children that writers of informational texts are also researchers and suggest resources they can use to look for more information to enhance their informational books.

GRADE 3

18. Revising from Self-Assessments

In this session, youll teach children that writers need to compare their plans to their drafts, reminding them of different strategies to revise either the original plan or the writing.

10. Reusing and Recycling in the Revision Process

In this session, you could teach children that as writers revise, they look back at what theyve already done, making sure they are carrying over all they have learned into their new writing.

19. Crafting Speeches, Articles, or Brochures Using Information Writing Skills

In this session, youll continue to teach children that the skills they used to write their information books can be transferred to other sorts of information writing, and can be used quickly, on the run. Specifically, youll give students the opportunity to reimagine the text they have already written as a speech, a brochure, or an article.

11. Creating Introductions through Researching Mentor Authors

In this session, youll guide students through an inquiry process that asks them to consider introduction strategies of mentor texts.

BEND III

Moving Toward Publication, Moving Toward Readers

20. Bringing All You Know to Every Project

In this session, youll guide children to draw on all they know as they finish up their projects.

12. Taking Stock and Setting Goals

In this session, youll teach students how to review their informational writing using a checklist and then how to make a plan for revision.

21. A Final Celebration: Using Knowledge about Nonction Writing to Teach Younger Students
In this session, you could teach children that writers teach others about their topics, sharing all the knowledge and expertise they have gained with an audience.

13. Putting Oneself in Readers Shoes to Clear Up Confusion

In this session, youll teach children additional revision strategies for clearing up confusion in their work, including imagining a different perspective and role-playing with a partner.
For additional information and sample sessions, visit www.UnitsofStudy.com

29

GRADE 3, UNIT 3

Changing the World

Persuasive Speeches, Petitions, and Editorials
Lucy Calkins and Kelly Boland Hohne

uring the first bend in this unit you will rally your third graders to support bold, brave opinions as they write persuasive speeches. Children first work together on a shared topic; this allows them to receive lots of help writing structured texts that contain a claim, reasons, and examples. They immerse themselves in the genre by writing this speech, revising it, and delivering it to the school principal. Then students write many more persuasive speeches in their notebookat least one or two a day. As they do, you coach them to apply and extend the opinion writing skills they learned in previous grades. At the end of this bend students use a checklist to assess their work, set goals, and create action plans for meeting those goals. The second bend gives writers the opportunity to work for an extended time on one persuasive speech, taking it through the writing process. They gather facts and details and organize them. They write long about their topic, categorize the evidence they collect, and decide which evidence belongs in their speech. They then deliver their speech to at least a small group. These speeches may be filmed. In Bend III,From Persuasive Speeches to Petitions, Editorials, and Persuasive Letters, students transfer and apply everything they have learned about writing persuasive speeches to writing other types of opinion pieces. While working on their new project, students generate ideas, plan, draft, revise, and edit, going through the writing process more quickly and with greater independence, at the same time learning strategies for raising the level of their work. Students then assess their work, revise their draft, and consider how well they are meeting the expectations for third-grade (perhaps fourth-grade) opinion writing. They publish a second piece at the end of this bend. In the final bend of the unit, Forming Cause Groups, students work collaboratively to support causes through writing in various genres.You may have a group of students dedicated to recycling, for example, or another group dedicated to animal rights. Because they will by now be well versed in taking themselves through the writing process, your teaching can focus instead on helping students incorporate research into their writing. To publish their third and final piece, students will consider where in the world the text should go to reach the particular audience the writer had in mind. The culminating celebration of this unit showcases all the pieces students have written as well as the process they have gone through to ensure that others will see and be moved by their work.

Welcome to Unit 3 BEND I

F

Launching Work on Persuasive Speeches

1. Practicing Persuasion
In this session, youll immerse students in the genre of persuasive speech writing, teaching them how to flash-draft a speech.

2. Gathering Brave, Bold Opinions for Persuasive Writing

In this session, youll teach students that writers of persuasive speeches take time thinking about their message. They gather, choose between, and try out different ideas for changes theyd like to see in the world. They draw on all they know about opinion writing as they write these entries.

3. Drawing on a Repertoire of Strategies for Generating Opinion Writing: Writing with Independence
In this session, youll teach students that persuasive writers sometimes write about people who deserve attentionor about places, things, or ideas that do. Instead of looking through the lens of whats broken? , persuasive writers sometimes look through the lens of whats beautiful?

4. Considering Audience to Say More

In this session, youll teach students a strategy for being more persuasive to their audience: addressing the audience directly.

5. Editing as You Go: Making Sure Your Audience Can Always Read Your Drafts
In this session, youll teach students that writers dont wait until they finish writing to edit. As they write, they consider their audience and take time to spell what they know by heart correctly to make sure their pieces are clear.

6. Taking Stock and Setting Goals

In this session, youll teach students that whenever writers want to get better at something, it helps to pause, self-assess their writing, and make plans for future work. 30
Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing Overview and Contents

BEND II

Raising the Level of Persuasive Writing

15. Becoming Our Own Job Captain

In this session, youll teach students one way that writers hold themselves accountable for meeting deadlines: making work plans.

7. Gathering All You Know about Your Opinion

In this session, youll teach students that writers collect evidence for their opinions first by gathering all they know about their topic and then by planning for their research.

16. Gathering a Variety of Evidence: Interviews and Surveys

In this session, you could teach students that writers conduct surveys and interviews to collect evidence for their opinions

8. Organizing and Categorizing

In this session, youll support writers in organizing and categorizing their evidence.

9. For Example: Proving by Showing

In this session, youll teach students that one way to make their speeches more persuasive is to provide examples to show what they are saying. Some of these examples are mini-stories.

17. Revising Your Introductions and Conclusions to Get Your Audience to Care
In this session, youll teach students that writers revise their introductions and conclusions, trying out several different ones, before deciding which will have the biggest impact on their audience.

10. By Considering Audience, Writers Select and Discard Material

In this session, youll again help students to embrace the notion of writing for an audience by considering what effect they want their speeches to have and selecting the most convincing material.

18. Taking Stock Again: Goal Setting with More Independence

In this session, youll remind students that writers take note of the progress they have made, assessing their work against a checklist or goal sheet and setting new goals for themselves as writers.

11. Paragraphing to Organize Our Drafts

In this session, youll teach students that writers use paragraphs to organize their drafts and use transition words to construct a cohesive draft.

BEND IV

Formning Cause Groups GRADE 3

19. Tackling a Cause

In this session, youll teach writers that one way to address a cause from different angles is to consider different audiences who can help you.

12. Choosing Words that Sound and Evoke Emotion

In this session, youll support your writers in doing a mini-inquiry into what makes for an effective and powerful speech and revise in light of their observations.

20. Becoming Informed about a Cause

In this session, youll teach writers that doing background reading on a cause can help them change their ideas.

13. Looking Back and Looking Forward: Assessing and Preparing for Mini-Publication
In this session, you could teach students that writers use an editing checklist to proofread their writing, taking their time and working with another writing partner to make sure they catch all the errors in their writing.

21. Yesterdays Revisions Become Todays Drafting Strategies

In this session, you could teach students that writers dont wait until the revision stage of the writing process to make sure their writing reflects all they know and can do. Writers revise as they draft.

22. Getting Our Writing Ready for Readers BEND III F From Persuasive Speeches to Petitions, Editorials, and Persuasive Letters 14. Inquiry into Petitions
In this session, youll teach students that there are different forms of opinion writing, including persuasive speeches, letters, and petitions, and that writers tailor their writing to fit the qualities of each form of opinion writing.
For additional information and sample sessions, visit www.UnitsofStudy.com

In this session, youll teach students that writers make sure their writing is free of errors so that their readers take them seriously and are convinced of their opinion.

23. Celebrating Activism

In this session, you could teach students that writers have a real audience in mind for their opinions, and they share their speeches, petitions, and editorials with this audience as a call to action.

31

GRADE 3, UNIT 4

Once Upon a Time

Adapting and Writing Fairy Tales
Lucy Calkins, Shana Frazin, and Maggie Beattie Roberts

uring the first bend in this very special unit youll rally each child to adapt a fairy talewe suggest children choose either Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Once writers have chosen a tale, they will first need to reread the classic version, then study and annotate it, noticing the plot as well as the qualities of a fairy tale. Children then plan their adaptations, thinking about significant changes they could make to alter the course of the tale. At first your children are apt to write their stories in a justthe-facts way. Their attention will be on getting the adaptations right. This will probably change midway when you teach storytelling as a way to rehearse and plan their adaptations. Suddenly, in partnerships, children will use gestures, small actions, expressions, and dialogue to act out their adaptations and bring their imagined stories to life. In this first bend you will also teach children that a narrator can function a bit like Jiminy Cricket once did in old-fashioned moviescoming onstage to tell viewers background information. They, too, can use a narrator to stitch their small-moment scenes together. The theme of the second bend is independence and transference. During this bend your children will write their second adaptation of a fairy taleof any tale they choose! Youll teach a series of lessons that support students in applying what they learned in the previous bend. You will address common pitfalls of third-grade narrative writingdrafts that are swamped with dialogue, sentences that lack variety, and scenes that are summarized rather than stretched out with detail. An important part of this bend is to help children imagine far more extensive revisions that anything theyve previously undertaken. This will set the stage for the message that pervades this bend:Push yourself. You can do more than you think. In the final bend, to celebrate your students growth and ensure that it continues, you will teach them to apply all theyve learned in writing an original fairy tale. You will teach children that writers of fairy tales use what they know about narrative writing, creating characters with wants who encounter trouble and thenta-da!theres a resolution. Once your writers have generated possible story ideas, they draft and, more importantly, revise until they exceed even their own expectations. Then you will coach them in editing and finally publishing their favorite tale.

Welcome to Unit 4 BEND I

F

Learning About Adaptations by Writing in the Footsteps of the Classics

1. Adapting Classic Tales

In this session, youll teach students that writers create their own fairy tales by adapting classic ones. To gain inspiration and begin to write, writers study several versions of a classic fairy tale and then ask themselves, Why might the author have made these versions?

2. Writing Story Adaptations that Hold Together

In this session, youll teach students that writers adapt fairy tales in meaningful ways. When changes are made, they must be consequential changes that affect other elements of the story, rippling throughout.

3. Storytelling, Planning, and Drafting Adaptations of Fairy Tales

In this session, youll teach students that writers story-tell or act out their stories to help as they plan their drafts and as they write their drafts.

4. Writers Can Story-Tell and Act Out as They Draft

In this session, youll teach students that writers can rehearse for writing by storytelling or acting out each scene.

5. Weaving Narration through Stories

In this session, youll teach students that writers often weave narration through fairy tales as a way to establish background, tie together scenes, and teach a moral or end a story.

6. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Assessment Using Self-Reection

In this session, youll teach students that writers check their work and plan for future projects.

32

Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing Unit 4 Overview and Contents

BEND II

Follow the Path: Adapting Fairy Tales with Independence

15. Writing Balanced Drafts: Tethering Small Actions to Important Objects

In this session, youll teach students that, to make scenes even more meaningful, writers not only include a characters actions but also objects important to the character.

7. Goals and Plans Are a Big Deal

In this session, youll teach students that writers rely on each other and themselves to independently plan not only their stories but their writing process.

16. Using Descriptive Language While Drafting

In this session, youll teach students to elaborate as they draft by revealing how writers balance out telling sentences with showing sentences.

8. Telling Stories that Make Readers Shiver

In this session, youll teach students that writers make fairy tales sound like fairy tales by using special languagein this case, by adding refrains.

17. Revising the Magic

In this session, youll teach writers to revise their fairy tales and tether the magic in their stories to the heart of the story, the beginning and/or end of the story.

9. Revising Early and Often

In this session, youll teach students that writers make significant revisions as they draft, using other authors writing as mentor texts.

18. Revising for Readers

In this session, youll teach students that writers show their readers how to read a piece by varying the pace of the writing.

10. When Dialogue Swamps Your Draft, Add Actions

In this session, youll teach students that writers balance their dialogue by adding accompanying actions.

11. Painting a Picture with Words: Revising for Language

In this session, youll remind students that writers of fairy tales use figurative language, painting a picture in their readers minds.

19. Editing with an Eye Out for Broken Patterns

In this session, you could teach students that writers reread their writing, looking for parts that need to be fixed up and edited. One thing writers do to help them edit is to look for where patterns of good writing are broken.

GRADE 3

12. The Long and Short of It: Editing for Sentence Variety
In this session, youll teach students that writers read their stories aloud, identifying choppy or abrupt sentences and smoothing them out by simplifying long-winded ones or complicating simplistic ones.

20. Happily Ever After: A Fairy Tale Celebration

In this session, students form small storytelling circles, sharing their fairy tales with a younger audience. Children lean on their storytelling background to bring their fairy tales to life.

BEND III

Blazing Trails: Writing Original Fairy Tales

13. Collecting Ideas for Original Fairy Tales

In this session, youll teach students that writers write original tales by using elements of strong narratives: specific characters, motivations, troubles, and resolutions.

14. From This Is a Fairy Tale About to Once upon a Time

In this session, you could teach students that writers look back on their own writing, thinking about which processes and strategies worked for them before, and which didnt, to help them write their current piece.

For additional information and sample sessions, visit www.UnitsofStudy.com

33